---

Equitable Life

I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted that there needs to be conversation, and the fact that they have said that the process has to be speedy, but may I express a word of caution? Of course it has to be speedy, but it also has to be fair. In other compensation schemes, such as the financial assistance scheme and the cod war trawlermen's scheme, our experience has been that the Government have had to go back and look at them again. In some cases, there has had to be another trawl of applications. My advice is to make sure that we get the scheme right from the beginning. The scheme that we are talking about will be much more complex than either of the two compensation schemes I mentioned. I also wonder whether there is anything that MPs who have large numbers of Equitable Life policyholders in their constituency can do to help the Government to find out about the different types of people who have been affected.